A distant reading of empire

1. A distant reading of empire Professor Scott Enderle and Mae Capozzi

2. Close Reading • “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters”(Austen 1).

3. Close Reading • Critics draw conclusions about large period of time from a limited corpus.

4. Distant Reading • Franco Moretti • Analysis of a large corpus “from a distance.” • Rather than drawing conclusions about a large corpus from a few novels, the scholar can bring broad-based knowledge of a period to her analysis of just a few novels.

5. Matthew Jockers • Macroanalysis • “Though not ‘everything’ has been digitized, we have reached a tipping point, an event horizon where enough text and literature have been encoded to both allow and, indeed, force us to ask an entirely new set of questions about literature and the literary record”(Jockers 4).

6. Digital Humanities • Intersection of humanities and computing. • Archive-building, Game Theory

7. Blogging • Another aspect of DH work. • We maintained a blog to share our research with the greater DH community. • www.readingfromadistance.wordpress.com

8. Topic Modeling • MALLET • MAchine Learning for LanguagE Toolkit • LDA • The gist: A complex algorithm that places words into different bins based on co-occurrence.

9. Topic 1: Trade and Public Revenue • 1 0.33333 trade public money revenue years year great country tax intereft amount fum taxes paid company cent england price debt pay land india war debts commerce prefent produce london millions expence duties goods nation might annual national expences duty government account foreign printed kingdom time part capital increafebritain parliament credit

10. Flaws • Learning Curve • Preprocessing

11. Topic 114: India • 114 0.33333 company nabob indiabengal country government governor council colonel board court committee rupees bombay troops vizier honourable fort gentlemen army directors haftingscalcutta received power trade rajah made affairs appendix englifh lacks part chief war khan military time officers dated march revenues ally opinion provinces madras eaft sing cliveprefident major fervants year force powers authority peace row pay william late terms forces paid place money europeansprefidencytanjoreeuropeanmarattas copy dominions agreed means mahomedmeer province francishonour might article proceedings plan natives ragoba proper mogul officer narrative future amount men large command written indian entered cafe chiefs conduct charge members due private lands month merchants leave marattabenares immediately french wrote give account minute upton order poonafentnizam payment fend john hall captain protection april revenue raja signed arrival people receive mentioned territories report madrafs remain demand east field select accounts concluded supreme meafures influence laid agents grant george hands granted appears commander days indies party empire propofedfebruaryasia inhabitants zemindars execution agreement sepoys return united full letters years warren juftice camp proprietors prefent engagements charges january brigade appointment proceed attention tribute govern months true reply beg bahar enemy surat half determined meafure ordered

12. Topic 114 • “Company” • British East India Company • Battle of Plassey in 1857 • Defeats last remaining Nawab of Bengal • “Nabob” • Derived from “nawab.” • Nawab is the term for a governor in the Mughal period. • Used to describe an Englishman who had “gone native.” • “India” • Self-explanatory • India is a British word.

13. Topic 114 • Other interesting words • Clive • Robert Clive was a major player in the solidification of the East India Company in India. • Battle of Plassey • Hastings • Warren Hastings became the first governor-general of Bengal from 1772 to 1785. • Hastings was impeached by Edmund Burke but he was acquitted in 1795. His trial was a popular topic of discussion.

14. Results

15. Undergraduate Research • Blogging • Python • Re:Humanities Conference